Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news from Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a progressive perspective. It is published by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York, P.O. Box 20587, Tompkins Square Station, New York, NY 10009, weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com.

Note: There will be links but no Update on May 4, 2014. Publication will resume the following week.

*1. Guatemala: 1 Killed in Attack on Indigenous Village
Heavily armed men employed by the son of a local landowner shot five indigenous Q’eqchi’ on Apr. 7 in the community of Nueve de Febrero, Cobán municipality, in the northeastern Guatemalan department of Alta Verapaz, according to community residents. The wounded Q’eqchi’ were taken by ambulance to the national hospital in Cobán; one died from his injuries on Apr. 20. Residents say the attackers were under the command of Augusto Sandino Ponce, the son of landowner David Leonel Ponce Ramírez. The Ponces are said to be linked to a project by the Hidroeléctrica Santa Rita S.A. company for building a dam in the Monte Olivo region. The Nueve de Febrero community has been active in opposition to the dam for the past two years.

Juan Humberto Botzoc, from the Mayan Association for Integral Community Development (ASOMADIC), told an interviewer on the web-based Radio Mundo Real that Hidroeléctrica Santa Rita supporters had tried to end the opposition first by bringing false charges against activists and then by carrying out acts of violence, including an August 2013 assassination attempt against community leader David Chen which resulted in the death of two children. In November security guards employed by the Ponce family fired at community members, wounding one; another attack, in December, left four youths wounded. Far from taking action against the project, Botzoc said, “the department’s governor has been saying on the radio that ‘these communities are troubled, these communities don’t want development.’” Botzoc noted that tensions had also developed around another hydroelectric project in the department, the RENACE 3 dam, which he said would affect eight communities in San Pedro Carchá municipality. On Apr. 21 Carlos Vicente Chub, the secretary of a local community council there, was shot in the foot after receiving several threats, according to Botzoc. (Prensa Comunitaria (Guatemala) 4/7/14; Radio Mundo Real 4/24/14)

Attacks like those against the dam opponents have become common since President Otto Pérez Molina, a former general, took office in January 2012. An Apr. 24 article in Foreign Policy in Focus (FPIF) charged that Pérez Molina’s government has been taking “careful and calculated” steps “to stifle dissent.” The article details attacks, sometimes fatal, on journalists, human rights defenders, dam opponents and unionists. Even judges and prosecutors are under attack. On Apr. 4 the Guatemalan bar association suspended Judge Yasmín (or Jazmín) Barrios, who presided over the court that on May 10, 2013 convicted former dictator Gen. Efraín Ríos Montt (1982-83) of genocide against indigenous peoples during his administration; the conviction was annulled 10 days later by the Constitutional Court (CC) [see Updates #1176, 1178]. International groups, including the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ), and the Spanish bar association, the General Council of the Spanish Bars (CGAE), condemned Barrios’ suspension, which was based on a complaint from Ríos Montt’s defense attorney, Moisés Galindo. Efforts are also reportedly under way to remove the widely respected attorney general, Claudia Paz y Paz, from office six months before her term expires in December. (Latin American Herald Tribune 4/21/14 from EFE; FPIF 4/24/14)

At least seven labor organizers in Guatemala’s banana-growing sector have been murdered since 2011. According to a report by the US-based nonprofit US Labor Education in the Americas Project (USLEAP), “[i]t is nearly impossible for workers to organize unions to improve wages and conditions on the Pacific coast of Guatemala,” where working conditions and pay “are some of the worst in Latin America.” With banana sales at $623.4 million in 2013, Guatemala is now the world’s third largest exporter of the fruit, after Costa Rica and Colombia. (Tico Times (Costa Rica) 4/22/14)

*2. Mexico: Thousands Protest “Televisa Law”
Thousands of protesters formed a human chain in Mexico City on Apr. 26 in a demonstration against a telecommunications law proposed by President Enrique Peña Nieto and now under consideration in the Senate. The protesters included former Mexico City mayor Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas Solórzano (1997-2000), one of the founders of the center-left Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD); youths from #YoSoy132 (“I’m number 132”), a student movement that formed in 2012 in opposition to the election campaign of then-candidate Peña Nieto, of the centrist Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) [see Update #1130]; and some members of the center-right National Action Party (PAN). The organizers estimated participation at 7,000, while the Federal District (DF, Mexico City) police put the number at 3,000.

After forming the human chain—which stretched more than three miles, although with some gaps, from the Auditorio Nacional to the Televisa television network’s offices in the Chapultepec neighborhood—the protesters marched to the Senate building for a rally. Only unity and mobilization from opponents would keep the government from imposing censorship and strengthening the television monopolies, Cárdenas said. “We’re not going to give up,” he added. “For this we’re going to exercise our rights, whether they like it or not.” There were also smaller protests in León, Guanajuato; Saltillo, Coahuila; and Ciudad Juárez and the city of Chihuahua in Chihuahua state.

The proposed law is supposed to provide a legal framework for implementing constitutional reforms passed last years. Supporters, including all the PRI senators and many from the PAN, claim the bill would weaken the de facto monopolies of billionaire Carlos Slim over cell phone service and of Televisa and the rival Azteca (formerly TV Azteca) over television. But opponents say it would actually strengthen the two dominant television networks, and critics refer to the bill as the “Televisa law.” According to opponents the proposal would give the federal Governance Secretariat the power to review radio and television content, would do nothing to encourage independent production of television and radio material by Mexicans, and would weaken public, indigenous and community media, which already face major hurdles when they try to win licenses [see Update #1213]. (La Jornada (Mexico) 4/27/14, 4/27/14)

The bill originally included a requirement for telecommunication companies to give intelligence agencies the geographical location of users if requested; another provision would allow the government to block communications temporarily in situations where the authorities claim national security is at risk. Activists responded with internet campaigns. One group posted an English-language appeal on YouTube for international solidarity, and the hash tag “EPNvsInternet” (referring to Peña Nieto’s initials) was soon cited more than 400,000 times on the internet and reached more than 58 million Twitter users. Protesters marched to the Televisa offices in Chapultepec the evening of Apr. 22 in a demonstration against the new “national security” powers the bill would have given the government. DF police agents blocked the marchers as they approached the building, beating and arresting four youths. The agents also beat representatives of the municipal government’s own DF Human Rights Commission (CDHDF) when they tried to intervene. Later that night senators from the PRI announced that they would remove the provisions from the bill. (Wall Street Journal 4/23/14; AP 4/24/14 via Huffington Post; LJ 4/24/14)

*3. Haiti: President Sets Minimum Wage by Decree
Bypassing Parliament, on Apr. 16 Haitian president Michel Martelly (“Sweet Micky”) issued a decree setting new minimum wage levels for different categories of employees, to go into effect on May 1. The decree basically follows recommendations made on Nov. 29 by the tripartite Higher Council on Wages (CSS) [see Update #1202], with the minimum wage ranging from 260 gourdes (US$6.60) a day in a category that includes bank employees, electricians and telecommunication workers to just 125 gourdes (US$3.17) a day for domestic workers. The decree confirmed the most controversial of the CSS’s recommendations, a 225 (US$5.71) gourde daily minimum for hourly workers in the country’s garment assembly plants, which produce for export and benefit from tax and tariff exemptions; this is just a 25 gourde increase over the minimum in effect since October 2012 under a 2009 law. For piece-rate assembly workers—the majority of the sector’s work force—the rate remains at the October 2012 level, 300 gourdes (US$7.61) a day. (Haïti Libre 4/19/14)

Assembly workers and international observers all agree that factory owners have never complied with the 300 gourde minimum for piece work; they have allegedly circumvented the requirement by setting unrealistic quotas [see Update #1197]. In December assembly workers went on strike for two days in Port-au-Prince to demand a wage of 500 gourdes (US$12.69); the owners retaliated by firing union activists [see Update #1210]. The 300 gourde minimum “wouldn’t be enough” now, due to the rising cost of living, economist Camille Chalmers of the Haitian Platform Advocating an Alternative Development (PAPDA) said, “and the 225 gourdes are a retreat.” The labor solidarity group Workers’ Antenna called for “rebellion and mobilization,” while the National Confederation of Haitian Workers (CNOHA) said it would continue to seek the 500 gourde minimum. (AlterPresse (Haiti) 4/21/14, 4/24/14)

In other news, violence broke out at a large homeless encampment at Camp Caradeux, on the northeastern outskirts of Port-au-Prince, after riot police arrived in some dozen vehicles in the early morning of Apr. 24 to put down a demonstration. The residents—about 13,000 people who lost their homes in a massive January 2010 earthquake and still have nowhere to live--were upset when a team from the International Organization for Migration (OIM in French and Creole) came to carry out a survey of the camp’s population. The residents said they hadn’t been warned and were afraid the survey was part of a plan to evict them from the camp. The OIM team left when the residents began to demonstrate, but the police agents proceeded to attack the protesters with clubs and tear gas. “The babies are in a critical state after having inhaled tear gas,” Ernst Jean-Baptiste, an assistant coordinator of the village of Caradeux, told a reporter. “Several young men and women were clubbed” by the riot police, he said. (AlterPresse 4/25/14)

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*1. Chile: Was Valparaíso Fire a “Natural Disaster”?
The central Chilean port city of Valparaíso remained under military control as of Apr. 15, three days after forest fires began sweeping into some of the city’s working-class neighborhoods, leaving at least 15 people dead and destroying 2,900 homes. Interior Minister Rodrigo Penailillo said the government hoped to have the fires under control by Apr. 16, but the national forestry agency indicated that it might take the 5,000 firefighters and other personnel in the city as long as 20 days to extinguish the fires completely. Some 12,500 people are now without homes in Valparaíso; this disaster follows an 8.2-magnitude earthquake in northern Chile that killed five people on Apr. 1 and made 2,635 homes uninhabitable.

Declared a World Heritage City in 2004 by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), Valparaíso is located in an area prone to forest fires. But experts and reporters said the extent of the devastation resulted less from natural conditions than from political failures. Witnesses reported that the firefighters--all unpaid volunteers, according to Chilean historian Sergio Grez--were slow to arrive when the fires started on the afternoon of Apr. 12, and they were equipped only with shovels and one truck. Driven by strong winds, the fires spread quickly through the close-packed wooden structures in the poorer neighborhoods, made vulnerable by decades of unplanned growth. Roads were often too narrow for fire engines, and there was no running water for fire hoses in the affected areas. Helicopters came with water hours later.

“We have been the builders and architects of our own dangers,” Valparaíso mayor Jorge Castro admitted on Apr. 13. Chilean president Michelle Bachelet told the national daily El Diario de Cooperativa on Apr. 15 that her government would try “to rebuild in a more orderly manner.” “It’s not enough to reinstall houses or support families,” she said. “We have to do something more substantive.” (El Mostrador (Chile) 4/14/14; Les InRocks (France) 4/14/14; US News & World Report 4/15/14 from AP)

*2. Honduras: Radio Progreso Executive Murdered
Honduran journalist Carlos Hilario Mejía Orellana was stabbed to death the night of Apr. 11 at his home in the city of Progreso, in the northern department of Yoro. Mejía was the marketing executive for Radio Progreso, a community radio station established by Jesuits, and was also a member of the Jesuits’ Reflection, Investigation and Communications Team (ERIC). Police investigators suggested that he was killed by someone close to him in a “crime of passion,” but the radio station’s director, the Jesuit priest Ismael Moreno, called the murder “a direct attack not only on the life of our colleague, but a frontal attack on the work produced by Radio Progreso.” The station, which provided favorable coverage of resistance to the June 2009 military coup that overthrew then-president José Manuel (“Mel”) Zelaya Rosales (2006-2009), has been the target of threats over the years [see Updates #1184, 1215]. The Inter American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR, or CIDH in Spanish), called on the Honduran government in 2009—and again in 2010 and 2011--to provide protection for 16 Radio Progreso staffers, including Mejía.

National and international observers condemned Mejía’s murder and raised questions about the police investigation. Three US Congress members—Reps. James McGovern (D-MA), Sam Farr (D-CA) and Janice Schakowsky (IL)—issued a statement on Apr. 15 expressing “dismay” over the Honduran government’s failure to provide adequate protection for the station’s staff. They called on the authorities “to immediately implement protective measures for Radio Progreso and ERIC employees and to carry out a thorough investigation of the murder.” The French-based organization Reporters Without Borders (RSF) called for the creation of a protection mechanism for the country’s journalists, who have been subject to more than 100 attacks and threats since 2010, according to a report by the Honduran government’s National Human Rights Commission (CONADEH). Earlier in the month Mexican novelist Álvaro Enrigue had attended an IACHR session in Washington, DC, to read the names of 32 Honduran journalists killed in the last decade. (Latin American Herald Tribune 4/13/14 from EFE; Adital (Brazil) 4/15/14; Rep. McGovern press release 4/15/14; Journalism in the Americas 4/16/14)

*3. El Salvador: US Judge Rules Against SOA Grad
A US immigration judge has ruled that former Salvadoran defense minister José Guillermo García Merino (1979-1983) is eligible for deportation from the US because of “clear and convincing evidence” that he “assisted or otherwise participated” in 11 acts of violence during the 1980s, including the March 1980 murder of San Salvador archbishop Oscar Arnulfo Romero. Gen. García also helped conceal the involvement of soldiers who raped and killed four US churchwomen in December 1980 and “knew or should have known” about the military’s December 1981 massacre of more than 800 civilians in the village of El Mozote, according to the 66-page decision by Immigration Judge Michael Horn in Miami. The judge ruled against García on Feb. 26, but the decision was only made public on Apr. 11 as the result of a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request by the New York Times. García’s lawyer said the general would appeal.

The decision against García comes after repeated efforts to bring him to justice in the US for war crimes committed in El Salvador. He came to the US in 1989 and was granted political asylum a year later. In May 1999 the families of the four murdered US churchwomen filed a suit (Ford et al. v. García, Vides Casanova) against García and former defense minister Gen. Carlos Eugenio Vides Casanova (1983-1989) in Florida, where both generals have lived since moving to the US. A jury cleared the generals. Also in 1999 the San Francisco-based Center for Justice and Accountability (CJA) brought a suit (Ramagoza Arce v. Garcia and Vides Casanova) against the generals on behalf of Salvadoran torture victims; the jury awarded the victims $54.6 million in 2002. US prosecutors began seeking the generals’ deportation in 2009, and an immigration judge cleared the way for Gen. Vides Casanova’s removal in February 2013 [see World War 4 Report 2/24/13].

The war crimes with which García and Vides Casanova are charged took place during a bloody counterinsurgency against the rebel Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN); the fighting left 70,000 people dead. The FMLN later became a legal political party under a 1992 peace accord, and it backed current president Mauricio Funes, an independent, in his 2009 campaign. A leader of the FMLN, Salvador Sánchez Cerén, won the presidency in a runoff on Mar. 9 this year and is to take office on June 1. (BBC News 3/17/14)

*4. Haiti: Human Rights Activist Threatened
On Apr. 2 Pierre Espérance, the executive director of the Haitian nonprofit National Human Rights Defense Network (RNDDH), received a letter at the organization’s Port-au-Prince office warning him not to issue “false reports destabilizing for the country.” “In 99 we missed you, this time you won't escape it, stop speaking,” the letter’s authors wrote, referring to a 1999 attack in which Espérance suffered bullet wounds to the shoulder and knee while driving in Port-au-Prince. Recent reports by the RNDDH have dealt with such subjects as the slow pace of the prosecution of former “president for life” Jean-Claude (“Baby Doc”) Duvalier (1971-1986) [see Update #1210] and alleged ties between drug traffickers and the government of President Michel Martelly (“Sweet Micky”).

In related news, on Apr. 16 the Port-au-Prince-based Bureau of International Lawyers (BAI) and its US partner, the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti (IJDH), issued a report on recent anti-union acts by Haitian employers and on apparent government complicity with the owners. The report cites the January firing of at least 36 unionists in the garment sector following two days of strikes and marches in December for an increased minimum wage [see Update #1210]. The report notes that the country’s garment assembly plants still have not complied with minimum wage requirements that went into effect in October 2012. Union leaders at Electricité d’Haïti (EDH), the state-owned electricity company, have also been illegally terminated, according to the report. On Jan. 10 the treasurer of the EDH workers’ union was knocked unconscious when EDH security guards tried to break up a press conference the unionists were holding on the street outside the company’s parking lot. (Center for Economic and Policy Research, Haiti Relief and Reconstruction Watch 4/17/14)

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*1. Chile: Water Activist to Be Jailed for “Slander”
On Apr. 7 a court in La Ligua, in Chile’s Petorca province, Valparaíso region, convicted agronomist Rodrigo Mundaca of slander and sentenced him to 541 days in prison for accusing former government minister Edmundo Pérez Yoma of water usurpation. Mundaca, the secretary of the Movement in Defense of Water, Land and the Environment (Modatima), also faces a fine. According to current Modatima spokesperson Luis Soto, the court’s decision won’t stop the group’s activist work. He said Modatima would take the case “to the Valparaíso Appeals Court, and if we aren’t successful there, we’ll go to the Supreme Court.”

Pérez Yoma is a Christian Democratic Party (PDC) politician who served twice as defense minister under former president Eduardo Frei Ruiz-Tagle (1994-2000) and then as interior minister in the first term (2006-2010) of current president Michelle Bachelet. He owns 90% of an agricultural firm, Sociedad Agrícola El Cóndor Ltda. Modatima says the company has taken water illegally from the Los Ángeles estuary for its crops, depriving local farmers and small businesses of the resource, which is scarce in much of Chile. The group has made the same accusation against Agrícola San Ignacio, owned by Ignacio Alamos, and Agrícola Iguana, owned by Marcelo Trivelli. Apparently Pérez Yoma sued for slander after Mondaca aired the charges on CNN Chile during a 2012 interview. (El Ciudadano (Chile) 4/5/14; Radio Universidad de Chile 4/8/14; Modatima communiqué 4/9/14)

In other news, after a year and a half of imprisonment on charges filed under Chile’s “antiterrorist law” [see Update #1161], six indigenous Mapuche have been cleared by the Oral Criminal Court in Temuco, the capital of Araucanía region. José Antonio Ñirripil, Eliseo Ñirripil Cayupán, Elvis Millán Colicheu, Jorge Cayupán Ñirripil, Cristian Alexis Cayupán Morales and Daniel Canio Tralcal were accused of setting a fire at the Brasil estate in Vilcún community in September 2009; several of them were also charged with robbery with intimidation. At one point they held a hunger strike to demand their release.

Three other Mapuche prisoners began a hunger strike in the Angol prison on Apr. 10 to push for a review of their sentences and a pardon for a fourth prisoner, José Mariano Llanca, who is terminally ill. The three strikers, Cristian Pablo Levinao Melinao, Luis Humberto Marileo Cariqueo and Leonardo Eusebio Quijón Pereira, were sentenced to 10 years in prison for homicide and robbery with intimidation. They previously held a hunger strike in October 2012 [see Update #1147]. (Adital (Brazil) 4/11/14)

The Argentina-based organization Peace and Justice Service (SERPAJ) and Argentine human rights activist Adolfo Pérez Esquivel, winner of the 1980 Nobel peace price, have sent a letter to Chilean president Bachelet expressing their concern about the threat to Mapuche communities from what they called “the multiplication of investment projects of an industrial character, such as hydroelectric plants and the salmon industry’s fish farming.” SERPAJ and Pérez Esquivel praised the changes Bachelet promised as she started her new term in office on Mar. 11, and they predicted “an historic significance for your government if you encourage the application of the Mapuche communities’ right to [their] territories.” (MapuExpress (Chile) 4/8/14)

*2. Argentina: General Strike Targets Fernández Policies
A large part of Argentina’s labor movement participated a 24-hour general strike on Apr. 10 to demand increases in wages and pensions and to protest the economic policies of President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner. With support from the Automatic Tramways Union (UTA) and three airline workers’ unions, the strike shut down surface trains, subways, air service, schools and businesses in many parts of the country. Union leaders said the action was 90% effective, and the Argentine business consulting firm Orlando Ferreres & Asociados S.A. set the losses for the day at almost $1 billion. Government officials and Fernández supporters downplayed the significance of the strike, charging that relatively few workers actively participated and that people stayed home only because transportation was cut off by the UTA and by roadblocks that leftist parties and groups had set up.

The Apr. 10 action was the second major strike against the Fernández government in a year and a half, following nearly a decade of labor support for the president and her late husband, Néstor Kirchner, who was president from 2003 to 2007 [see Update #1153]. Hugo Moyano--the longtime leader of the truck drivers’ union who heads the General Confederation of Labor (CGT) dissident faction and was a strong ally of Fernández until 2012--is now spearheading the labor attacks on her government. The current strike was backed by two other labor federations: the section of the left-leaning Federation of Argentine Workers (CTA) headed by Pablo Micheli and the more conservative CGT White and Blue faction, which is led by Tourism, Hotel and Restaurant Workers Union (Uthgra) head Luis Barrionuevo. Also supporting the strike was the Workers' Left Front, an alliance of three Trotskyist parties: the Workers' Party (PO), the Socialist Workers' Party (PTS), and Socialist Left (IS).

The strike reaffirmed the strength of Argentina’s labor movement, which represents 8 million workers, nearly half the labor force. At the same time the strike highlighted the movement’s divisions: it was strongly opposed by a section of the CTA and by the large CGT faction headed by Antonio Caló. (Wall Street Journal 4/9/14; InfoBAE (Argentina) 4/11/14; La Jornada 4/11/14 from correspondent)

*3. Mexico: HP Fined in Latest PEMEX Scandal
On Apr. 9 the California-based technology company Hewlett-Packard (HP) announced that it was paying a $108 million fine to the US Justice Department and the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to end an investigation into subsidiaries in Poland, Russia and Mexico that allegedly paid bribes to officials. The HP subsidiaries “created a slush fund for bribe payments, set up an intricate web of shell companies and bank accounts to launder money, employed two sets of books to track bribe recipients, and used anonymous email accounts and prepaid mobile telephones to arrange covert meetings to hand over bags of cash,” according to a statement by the Justice Department. HP said the corruption “was limited to a small number of people who are no longer employed by the company.”

In Mexico the bribery was aimed at winning contracts worth some $6 million “to sell hardware, software, and licenses” to Petróleos Mexicanos (PEMEX), the giant state-owned oil monopoly, the Justice Department said. “HP Mexico understood that it had to retain a certain third-party consultant with close ties to senior executives of PEMEX. HP agreed to pay a $1.41 million ‘commission’ to the consultant.” The consultant then paid about $125,000 to a PEMEX official, according to the Justice Department statement. (San Jose (California) Mercury News 4/9/14; La Jornada (Mexico) 4/10/14 from AFP, Reuters)

This is the second revelation in less than two months of corruption involving PEMEX and a US corporation. At the end of February the US banking corporation Citigroup Inc. announced that its Mexican subsidiary, Banco Nacional de Mexico (Banamex), had lent some $400 million to a major PEMEX contractor, Oceanografía SA de CV, based on falsified invoices that Oceanografía claimed it had issued to PEMEX [see Update #1212]. According to initial reports, some PEMEX employees and one Banamex employee had collaborated in this scheme. But on Apr. 2 the New York Times reported that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the US attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York had started a criminal inquiry into the possibility that Citigroup employees in the US were involved. The investigators are also looking to see whether the bank ignored warning signs, according to the article. In addition, the US attorney’s office in Massachusetts has issued subpoenas in connection with suspicions that Citigroup may have failed to maintain proper safeguards against money laundering. (NYT 4/2/14)

In addition to corruption scandals, PEMEX faces complaints about environmental damage. As of Apr. 9 some 75 communities in Nacajuca and Jalpa de Méndez municipalities in the southern Mexican state of Tabasco had blocked roads to oil installations for a week to demand that representatives of PEMEX and the state return to discussions with local residents. The communities want to be compensated for damages caused by the escape of gas from the Terra 123 oil well starting on Oct. 19; the problems continued into December. The discussions broke off on Mar. 25 when PEMEX announced it wouldn’t pay for damages. According to Verónica Pérez Rojas, a legislative deputy from the center-left Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), about 50,000 families were affected by the leak, which she said contaminated crops and bodies of water and caused the deaths of farm animals. (LJ 4/9/14)

*4. Cuba: Did USAID KO Deal for Gross Release?
US citizen Alan Gross, who is serving a 15-year prison sentence in Cuba for his work there as a contractor for the US Agency for International Development (USAID), held a liquids-only hunger strike from Apr. 3 to Apr. 11 to protest his treatment by both the Cuban and the US governments. According to Scott Gilbert, Gross’s Washington, DC-based lawyer, the prisoner started his hunger strike after he learned about an Apr. 3 Associated Press report on ZunZuneo, the “Cuban Twitter” service that USAID launched after his arrest in December 2009. Gross was charged with seeking to subvert the Cuban government by supplying dissidents with internet technology, and the ZunZuneo had the potential to damage his legal case [see Update #1215].

A statement released by a public relations firm hired by Gross’s family said he had called off the fast at the request of his 91-year-old mother but that he planned to continue protesting. “There will be no cause for further intense protest when both governments show more concern for human beings and less malice and derision toward each other,” Gross added, according to the statement. (Miami Herald 4/13/14)

Actions by USAID officials and contractors may in fact have directly sabotaged efforts to arrange an early release for Gross, an Apr. 9 article by Newsweek reporter Jeff Stein suggested, citing Fulton Armstrong, a former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and National Security Council (NSC) Latin America specialist who worked as an aide to then-senator John Kerry (D-MA) in 2010. According to Armstrong, the Cuban government was willing to consider freeing Gross if the US rolled back some of its “regime change” programs in Cuba. Armstrong said he and an aide to then-representative Howard Berman (D-CA) got an agreement from top USAID and State Department officials for the rollback.

Cuban officials “responded very positively and said that the cleanup—which they understood would be done in phases—would certainly help them make the case for expedited procedures for Gross’s release,” Armstrong told Newsweek. But some USAID officials refused to go along with the plan. “They reassured their contractors and grantees that, despite rumors of change, business would continue as usual—information that would surely reach Cuban ears—and they later leaked to the press that, in fact, program funding remained unchanged and the reforms were not being implemented,” Armstrong said. “At that point, the discussions about program reforms to gain Gross’s release ended.” (Newsweek 4/9/14)

Another article by Jeff Stein raises questions about the quality of USAID’s Cuba contacts and contractors. One of Gross’s contacts was José Manuel Collera Vento, the grand master of the Grand Lodge of Cuba’s Freemasons; on Apr. 1, 2011, the Cuban government revealed that Collera Vento was a Cuban agent. One of USAID’s contractors for Cuban operations was DC-based public relations entrepreneur Akram Elias, who worked with both Gross and Collera Vento. Elias has contracts with 18 US government agencies, according to his Capital Communications Group website, but his business interests aren’t limited to the US. In November 2010 he flew to Damascus to offer his services to the Syrian government; he proposed to work for $22,000 a month at improving Syria’s image in Washington and possibly ending sanctions the US had imposed. (Newsweek 4/7/14)

Daniel Ramos, who heads operations for Cuba’s state-owned telecommunications company, Empresa de Telecomunicaciones de Cuba SA (Etecsa), in effect admitted at an Apr. 9 press conference in Havana that Cubans’ limited access to the internet has contributed to the success of operations like ZunZuneo. “[One] of our desires and our intentions this year is to succeed in bringing the internet to the population,” he said. (Radio Rebelde (Cuba) 4/9/14; La Jornada (Mexico) 4/10/14 from AP, Reuters, Prensa Latina, Xinhua)

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*1. Brazil: Kennedy Backed Plan for 1964 Coup
On Apr. 1, the 50th anniversary of the military coup that removed left-leaning Brazilian president João Goulart (1961-64) from office, the Washington, DC-based research group National Security Archive posted 16 Brazil-related documents from the administration of US president John Kennedy (1961-1963) on its website. The documents—which include declassified National Security Council (NSC) records and recently transcribed tapes of White House conversations—detail the administration’s efforts to bring President Goulart into line, and its plans for dealing with him if he continued to implement social reforms and to oppose US policy on Cuba.

President Kennedy and his advisers were considering a military coup as early as July 1962, according to a tape Kennedy made secretly of a July 30 meeting in the Oval Office. “We may very well want [the Brazilian military] to take over at the end of the year, if they can,” then-deputy assistant secretary of state for inter-American affairs Richard Goodwin advised. Lincoln Gordon, the US ambassador to Brazil, said that “one of our important jobs is to strengthen the spine of the military. To make clear, discreetly, that we are not necessarily hostile to any kind of military action whatsoever if it’s clear that the reason for the military action is…[Goulart’s] giving the country away to the...” “Communists,” Kennedy interrupted, finishing the sentence.

On Dec. 11, 1962, a meeting of the NSC’s Executive Committee considered three options on Brazil: “do nothing and allow the present drift to continue”; “collaborate with Brazilian elements hostile to Goulart with a view to bringing about his overthrow”; and “seek to change the political and economic orientation of Goulart and his government.” The committee decided on the third option, saying that Goulart’s opponents lacked the “capacity and will to overthrow” him and that there wasn’t “a near-future US capability to stimulate [a coup] operation successfully.” But the NSC felt that the coup option “must be kept under active and continuous consideration.”

President Kennedy sent his brother, Attorney General Robert Kennedy, to talk to Goulart on Dec. 17, but the Brazilian president continued with his reforms and his independent foreign policy. By October 1963 the US president felt he’d had enough. “Do you see a situation where we might be—find it desirable to intervene militarily ourselves?” he asked at an Oct. 7 meeting. “I would not want us to close our minds to the possibility of some kind of discreet intervention which would help see the right side win,” Ambassador Gordon said, and called for contingency plans to get ammunition or fuel to pro-US factions of the military. After the meeting, Gordon returned to Brazil and supervised the preparation of these plans at the US embassy. The plans had what a Nov. 22 transmission memorandum described as “a heavy emphasis on armed intervention.”

Kennedy never read the Nov. 22 memo; he was assassinated that day. It was left to the administration of his successor, President Lyndon Johnson (1963-1969), to back the Brazilian military when it overthrew Goulart in April 1964. (National Security Archive 4/2/14; La Jornada (Mexico) 4/3/14 from correspondent)

As the center-left government of current Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff marked the coup anniversary this month, a grassroots organization, the Xingu Alive Forever Movement (MXVPS), charged that old policies of spying on activists were continuing despite the restoration of democracy in 1985. MXVPS coordinator Antonia Melo has filed a complaint against the Brazilian Intelligence Agency (ABIN) and the Belo Monte Construction Consortium (CCBM) charging that they spied on the group during its annual planning meeting in February 2013. The MXVPS is a collective of organizations opposing the building of the giant Belo Monte dam in Vitória do Xingu municipality in the northern Brazilian state of Pará [see Update #1189]. (Adital (Brazil) 4/3/14)

*2. Cuba: USAID’s “Cuban Twitter” Flops
The US Agency for International Development (USAID), a US government foreign aid agency, secretly ran a cell phone-based imitation of the Twitter social networking service in Cuba from 2010 to 2012, according to an Apr. 3 report by the Associated Press (AP) wire service. The service—named “ZunZuneo,” Cuban slang for a hummingbird’s tweet—was developed in conjunction with two private contractors, the Washington, DC-based Creative Associates International and the Denver-based Mobile Accord. ZunZuneo was popular with young Cubans, who were unaware of its origin; by 2012 the service had some 40,000 subscribers.

The Cuban government restricts internet access but encourages the use of cell phones, provided by the state-owned enterprise Cubacel. Starting in 2009 and using 500,000 phone numbers supplied secretly by a “key contact” at Cubacel, USAID and Creative Associates began constructing a messaging service similar to Twitter but based on cell phone text messages rather than the internet. ZunZuneo went public in February 2010, with nonpolitical messages on subjects like music and sports.

But providing Cubans with a social network was apparently not USAID’s main goal. The agency eventually planned to use ZunZuneo to create what it called “smart mobs” in “critical/opportunistic situations,” according to USAID documents, with the strategic objective of “push[ing Cuba] out of a stalemate through tactical and temporary initiatives, and get[ting] the transition process going again towards democratic change.” Planning for ZunZuneo started about a year after USAID officials discussed “between five to seven different transition plans” for “hastening a peaceful transition to a democratic, market-oriented society” in Cuba, according to documents filed in federal court in Washington in January 2013 [see Update #1160]. USAID also used the service to construct what AP described as “a vast database about the Cuban subscribers, including gender, age, ‘receptiveness’ and ‘political tendencies’”; the agency said it could use this information to “maximize our possibilities to extend our reach.”

The “Cuban Twitter” project eventually unraveled because of the difficulty of keeping ZunZuneo’s origins secret and the cost of running it—including the large payments USAID’s front companies had to make to Cubacel for the text messages. By the end of 2012 ZunZuneo had collapsed--to the disappointment of many Cuban users—without ever being used to promote “smart mobs.” (AP 4/3/14)

The Cuban government quickly denounced the project after the AP story’s publication. “The US should respect international law and the intentions and principles of the United Nation’s Charter,” Cuban Foreign Ministry North American division director Josefina Vidal said on Apr. 4. She called for the US to “end its illegal and covert actions against Cuba.” (La Jornada (Mexico) 4/5/14 from AFP, DPA) Reaction was not much more favorable in Washington, where USAID head Rajiv Shah is scheduled to testify on Apr. 8 before the Senate Appropriations Committee’s State Department and Foreign Operations Subcommittee. In a television appearance on Apr. 3, the subcommittee’s chair, Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT), described the project as “dumb, dumb, dumb.” (AP 4/4/14)

*3. Mexico: Four Die in Chiapas Land Dispute
Four people died the morning of Apr. 5 in a confrontation between indigenous Mexicans over land in Chilón municipality in the highland region of the southeastern state of Chiapas. The violence broke out when some 25 people tried to remove members of the Regional Organization of Autonomous Ocosingo Coffee Growers (ORCAO) from a 84-hectare ranch; sources differ on whether the ranch is called San Luis or Luis Irineo. The attackers were apparently egged on by the former owner of the ranch, which a group of ORCAO members took over in 1994. On Apr. 6 the state attorney general’s office announced that four people had been arrested in the incident. (La Jornada (Mexico) 4/6/14; SDP Noticias (Mexico) 4/6/14)

The Jan. 1, 1994 uprising of the Chiapas-based Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN) sparked land occupations throughout the state’s highlands, but not all the occupying groups were sympathetic to the Zapatistas; disputes continue to this day. Zapatista supporters in the Apr. 10 Ejido (communal farm), located between Altamirano and Las Margaritas in the highlands, say ORCAO members joined some 300 people from the “Democratic faction” of the Independent Central of Agrarian Workers and Campesinos (CIOAC) in a Jan. 30 attack on the ejido with stones, clubs and machetes that left six people injured [see World War 4 Report 2/19/14]. Medical workers from Altamirano’s San Carlos Hospital were reportedly attacked when they attempted to help the injured. EZLN supporters accuse the Las Margaritas municipal government as well as the state and federal governments of inciting the violence. (Proceso (Mexico) 2/19/14)

Zapatista sympathizers report that Juan Carlos Gómez Silvano, the regional coordinator of the pro-EZLN Ejido San Sebastián Bachajón, was murdered on Mar. 21 while in Chilón municipality, a little less than one year after the murder of another member of the ejido, Juan Vázquez Guzmán. The sources are not clear on the motives for the killings, but they point to Chilón mayor Leonardo Guirao Aguilar, of the small centrist Ecological Green Party of Mexico (PVEM), and mention a possible connection of the violence to the Florida-based Norton Consulting real estate company and plans for the development of tourism in the region, which includes the Palenque archeological site. (Koman Ilel (Mexico) 3/22/14; Enlace Zapatista (Mexico) 4/2/14)

*4. Honduras: Three Convicted in Reporter's Murder
On Mar. 25 a Tegucigalpa court convicted three men in the May 2012 murder of Honduran journalist Angel Alfredo Villatoro Rivera [see Update #1130]. Marvin Alonso Gómez and the brothers Osman Fernando and Edgar Francisco Osorio Argujo are scheduled to be sentenced on Apr. 25; prison terms could range from 40 years to life. At least 40 Honduran journalists have been murdered in the past decade, with few convictions. Cases include the July 2013 kidnapping and murder of television journalist Aníbal Barrow [see Update #1184] and the October 2013 shooting death of Globo TV camera operator Manuel Murillo Varela [see Update #1199]. The French-based organization Reporters Without Borders (RSF) ranks Honduras 129th out of 180 countries in its 2014 press freedom index. (Thomas Reuters Foundation 3/28/14; IFEX 3/31/14)

In related news, there have still been no arrests in the August 2013 shooting deaths of three members of the Tolupan indigenous group near an anti-mining and anti-logging protest in the community of Locomapa in the northern department of Yoro [see Update #1190]. The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR, or CIDH in Spanish), an agency of the Organization of American States (OAS), issued precautionary measures for the protection of 38 Locomapa residents on Dec. 19, but the suspects in the killings remain free. On Mar. 27 Selvin Matute, one of the two main suspects, warned an anti-mining activist that if the protesters continued to make declarations on Radio Progreso, they would be dragged from their houses and their tongues would be cut off. (América Latina en Movimiento (ALAI) 4/4/14)

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*1. Paraguay: Workers and Campesinos Hold General Strike
Starting on the evening of Mar. 25, thousands of Paraguayan unionists, campesinos and students participated in a 24-hour general strike to protest the economic policies of President Horacio Manuel Cartes Jara. Union sources said the action shut down transportation, schools and most businesses in Asunción. This was the country’s first general strike in 20 years, and the first major demonstration against the government since President Cartes’ inauguration last August. Cartes, a member of the rightwing Colorado Party, was elected in April 2013; the previous elected president, the left-leaning former Catholic bishop Fernando Lugo, was removed from office by Congress in a de facto coup on June 22, 2012, one year before the end of his term [see Update #1135].

The general strike was sponsored by a broad range of organizations, including the Classist Union Current (CSC), the Organization of Education Workers of Paraguay-National Union (OTEP-SN), the National Campesino Federation (FNC) and the leftist Paraguay Pyahurã Party (PPP). It was scheduled to coincide with the Poor Campesinos’ March, an event campesino groups have held for 21 years to press for agrarian reform. The campesinos were also demanding controls over the prices of staple products and an end to an agricultural system based on large estates. Unionists were calling for a 25% increase in the minimum wage and were protesting the Public-Private Alliance Law, a proposal by Cartes that opponents see as a way to privatize public infrastructure, such as water treatment plants, Asunción’s international airport and toll highways from the capital to Brazil, Argentina and Bolivia. Cartes had raised the minimum wage by 10% in February, from 1,658,232 to 1,824,005 guaranís a month (about US$373 to about US$410), but he acted without consulting union leaders, who dismissed the raise as inadequate.

The general strike opened with a music festival at the Plaza de la Democracia in Asunción the evening of Mar. 25 and a gathering of campesinos in front of the city’s cathedral. The government mobilized 26,000 agents of the National Police to monitor the strike and guard presidential offices and the Congress building, but there appeared to be no reports of violence. (Adital (Brazil) 3/26/14; InfoBAE (Argentina) 3/26/14; Mercopress (Uruguay) 3/27/14)

*2. Panama: Ngöbe-Buglé Step Up Fight Against Dam
Silvia Carrera, the traditional leader (cacica) of Panama’s indigenous Ngöbe-Buglé, announced on Mar. 30 that she would present an appeal the next day to the Supreme Court of Justice concerning land expropriated for the controversial Barro Blanco dam [see Update #1180]. She said this would be part of a legal action against Law 18. Passed on Mar. 26, 2013, the law allows the Public Services Authority (ASEP) to expropriate, evict and indemnify the population living beside the Tabasará river in the western province of Chiriquí, where the dam is being built. According to Ngöbe-Buglé activists, some 3,000 people will be relocated because of the project, which is now said to be 64% complete.

The Ngöbe-Buglé have been protesting the construction of the dam for the past two years. They insist that since the project is in their own designated territory (comarca), construction should not have been started without first holding a referendum of the indigenous group’s members. In a television interview on Feb. 11, Silvia Carrera charged that the government of rightwing Panamanian president Ricardo Martinelli had failed to respond to indigenous concerns because it has interests in common with Generadora del Istmo, S.A. (GENISA), the Honduran-owned company building the dam. Martinelli responded by charging that the Ngöbe-Buglé were playing electoral politics.

Meanwhile, protesters have set up barricades and a camp at the dam’s construction site in an effort to block the work. The Apr. 10 Movement, an indigenous community group that is independent of the traditional leadership, announced it would publicize information on attacks on human rights and environmental damage in the territory with the goal of stopping the dam. (Adital (Brazil) 3/27/14; Prensa Latina 3/30/14)

*3. Mexico: Bidding Set to Start on Energy Sector
After 75 years of state control over oil and gas production, the Mexican government is planning to open up about two-thirds of its reserves to bidding by private companies, according to information that Petróleos Mexicanos (PEMEX), Mexico’s state-owned oil monopoly, passed on to potential bidders on Mar. 28. This is the first indication of what can be expected from President Enrique Peña Nieto’s controversial “energy reform” program. Changes to the Constitution enabling the program were passed by Congress and a majority of states in December, over strong opposition from grassroots organizations and parties on the left; doubts about contracting out oil and gas exploitation increased following fraud allegations against a major PEMEX contractor, Oceanografía SA de CV [see Update #1212].

PEMEX estimates that Mexico has reserves of oil and gas totaling some 112.8 billion barrels, but more than half (about 60.2 billion barrels) is in unconventional sources such as shale gas. PEMEX is asking for control over about 31% of the total, but most of this would be in proven reserves that can be exploited by conventional means. Outside contractors would be bidding largely for shale deposits and oil reserves deep in the Gulf of Mexico; PEMEX is seeking just 15% of the shale reserves, for example. However, private contractors will continue to be involved in PEMEX’s operations, as they are now.

In other news, two activists, Ignacio García Maldonado and Emanuel López Martínez, were shot dead on the early morning of Mar. 29 while they were driving near Ciudad de las Canteras in the southern state of Oaxaca. García Maldonado belonged to the Popular Assembly of the Peoples of Oaxaca (APPO), a leading force in a movement that paralyzed much of the state for months in 2006 [see Update #1054]. The two men had been involved in peace talks between two communities in the Sierra Sur region, Santiago Amoltepec and San Mateo Yucutindoo, and they were traveling in a vehicle borrowed from the Human Rights Advocacy of the Human Rights of the Peoples of Oaxaca (DDHPO), apparently as part of this work. Oaxaca attorney general Joaquín Carrillo Ruiz promised a speedy investigation of the double murder. (LJ 3/30/14)

*4. Cuba: New Law Expands Foreign Investment
In a four-hour extraordinary session on Mar. 29 attended by President Raúl Castro Ruz, the 612 deputies in Cuba’s unicameral National Assembly of Popular Power voted unanimously to approve a new law governing foreign investment. Replacing a measure put in place in 1995 under then-president Fidel Castro, the Foreign Investment Law will allow foreign companies to operate in Cuba independently, rather than in joint ventures with state enterprises, according to a report in the Cuban daily Juventud Rebelde published shortly before the legislation was passed. Most foreign companies will be required to pay a 15% tax on profits, half the current rate, the article said, and they will enjoy a tax moratorium for the first eight years of their operations in Cuba. Rates may be higher for companies that exploit natural resources, such as nickel or fossil fuel.

The new policy includes guarantees that foreign property won’t be nationalized, as happened after the 1959 Revolution, except when national interests are involved, and in these cases the owners will receive compensation.

Vice President Marino Murillo, who is in charge of the economic sector, told the National Assembly that the country needs to have its gross domestic product (GDP) reach a 7% annual rate of growth, with accumulation or investment rates of 20%, and that this will only be possible with outside investment. The new investment will be oriented toward priority sectors, such as agriculture, forestry, wholesale trade, industry, tourism, construction, energy, mines and transportation, according to Foreign Trade Minister Rodrigo Malmierca. The law will allow investment by Cubans living abroad, but Malmierca noted that the Cuban American community based in Miami would still be restricted from investing because of the US government’s trade embargo against Cuba.

The new law is to go into effect in 90 days. It follows other moves by the Cuban government since September 2010 to build up the private sector at the expense of state enterprises [see Update #1128]. (La Jornada (Mexico) 3/29/14 from AP, AFP, DPA, 3/30/14 from Reuters, AP, AFP, DPA)

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About the Update

ISSN#: 1084 922X. From 1990 to 2015 Weekly News Update on the Americas covered news from Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a progressive perspective. It was published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York. We continue to post occasional links or articles. For more information, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com.